Mentos are a brand of packaged scotch mints or mint-flavored candies owned by the Italian-Dutch company Perfetti Van Melle.

[4] Fruit-flavored Mentos contain sugar, wheat glucose syrup, hydrogenated coconut oil, citric acid, fruit juices from concentrate (strawberry, orange, lemon) (1%), rice starch, gum arabic, natural flavors, sucrose esters of fatty acids, gellan gum, carnauba wax, colors (beta-carotene, beetroot red), and beeswax.

[6] Mentos are available in several flavors including mint, mixed fruit, cola, bubble gum, and in an assortment of orange, strawberry, and lemon.

The UK has five current flavors of rolls: In the UK, Mentos Gum is also available in stick packs (peppermint, spearmint, pure white, air action (menthol) and fruit), Bottles (spearmint, peppermint and red fruit - which retails for approximately £0.99), as well as flip top boxes.

Also sold is Mentos KIDZ, a bag with 12 boxes containing 10 miniature candies, in the flavors strawberry, orange, lemon, apple and blueberry.

Individuals facing various day-to-day dilemmas consume Mentos and are subsequently inspired to solve their problems at hand in a creative, often-humorous fashion.

These unusual behaviors are typically witnessed by nearby, sometimes antagonistic characters, and a roll of Mentos is boisterously displayed by the commercial's respective protagonist to the observer as an explanation for their actions.

The ad campaign was parodied in multiple television shows and music videos, including the Foo Fighters' "Big Me".

[7] First publicly demonstrated by chemistry teacher Lee Marek on the Late Show with David Letterman on September 14, 1999,[8] and later popularized in a June 2006[9] viral Internet video by Eepybird, a Mentos mint expedites a rapid release of carbon dioxide when dropped into a carbonated liquid, such as a soft drink.

MythBusters concluded that the potassium benzoate, aspartame, and CO2 gas contained in the Diet Coke, in combination with the gelatin and gum arabic ingredients of the Mentos, all contribute to the formation of the foam.

MythBusters reported that when fruit-flavored Mentos with a smooth waxy coating were tested in carbonated drink there was hardly a reaction, whereas mint-flavored Mentos (with no such coating) added to carbonated drink formed an energetic eruption, supporting the nucleation-site theory.

A paper by Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, confirmed that the rough surface of the Mentos candy helps speed the reaction.

[13][14] On the other hand, it has been shown that a wide variety of beverage additives such as sugars, citric acid, and natural flavors also enhance fountain heights.

[17][18] This record was afterwards beaten in November 2014 by another event organized by Perfetti Van Melle and Chupa Chups in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico where 4,334 Mentos and soda fountains were set off simultaneously.